Home Theater Forum › Home Theater Forum › Other Diversions › Computers and HTPC › Cool black Zune desktop theme for XP
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Cool black Zune desktop theme for XP

post #1 of 4
8/13/07 at 12:57pm
Thread Starter 
There's an official new theme for Windows XP out there based on Microsoft's Zune. It's a black-with-orange-highlights theme that's officially endorsed by Microsoft. No other software or hardware is needed. Just go here:

http://www.zune.net/en-us/meetzune/software.htm

...look in the lower right corner, download, and marvel at how cool and "noir-ish" it looks.

Harry
Reply
post #2 of 4
8/14/07 at 1:40am

Re: Cool black Zune desktop theme for XP

And I found these instructions for how to make it work right:

Quote:
There's a rather glaring error in the installation of the Zune theme that
causes such things as Windows Explorer's Places Bar (i.e., the left side of the window with common tasks, when the Explorer Bar is closed), as well as Control Panel's Places Bar and Category View (i.e., the left and right sides of the window), to have only white backgrounds, rather than correctly displaying the theme's dark gray, light gray, and orange colors. These are among other anomalies found elsewhere.

Unless the sub-directories are correctly placed, which the installer doesn't do, you will only get part of the theme. (As in the Aero theme in Vista, even though only one color scheme is defined, the Theme Management Service still needs its sub-directories, and its resources, in the right places).

To correct this, on your desktop, create a new folder called Shell, and, within this new Shell folder, create another new folder called NormalColor.

Go to C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\Zune and drag the new Shell folder into the Zune folder. Then Cut shellstyle.dll in the Zune folder, and Paste it
into the NormalColor folder, so that you end up with C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\Zune\Shell\NormalColor \shellstyle.dll, and NOT
C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\Zune\shellstyle.dll. To re-apply the theme, you can double click on C:\WINDOWS\Resources\Themes\Zune\zune.msstyles.

Making the corrections as shown above does make a world of difference!
Reply
post #3 of 4
8/14/07 at 2:05am
Thread Starter 

Re: Cool black Zune desktop theme for XP

Funny. My Zune Theme was already laid out that way, and now I recall when I did download it that there was some discussion about this. I'm now wondering if I downloaded it from the link I posted or a different one posted elsewhere that had been "fixed." I say that because I never had to make that little adjustment to the location of the files.

[edit: upon double-checking, that IS the link that downloaded the Zune theme from. It worked properly for me the first time without any adjustment, so it may work for others as well.]

Harry
Reply
post #4 of 4
8/14/07 at 11:08am

Re: Cool black Zune desktop theme for XP

Of course, why anyone would want to have their computer look Zune-ish, or even admit to having a Zune, is another question entirely! :-D
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Computers and HTPC
Home Theater Forum › Home Theater Forum › Other Diversions › Computers and HTPC › Cool black Zune desktop theme for XP